FILM

Winning an Oscar has barely affected Philip Seymour Hoffman’s career path. Here he talks to Robin Askew about his latest, low-key offering, ‘Jack Goes Boating’, which also marks his directorial debut.

"I've never had a dinner party that went that bad," laughs Philip Seymour Hoffman. "I've definitely had nights that went that bad, though! We all have had nights that went that bad…"

Hoffman is talking about what he describes as the "dinner party tragedy" that unfolds at the end of his directorial debut, 'Jack Goes Boating'. The film reworks Robert Glaudini's 2007 off-Broadway stage play of the same title, with most of the original cast - including Hoffman himself - reprising their roles.

He plays the eponymous Jack, a withdrawn New York limo driver who's coaxed into a relationship with the equally shy Connie (Amy Ryan - the only member of the central quartet who didn't appear in the original play) by his best mate Clyde (John Ortiz), who seems intent on destroying his own marriage to Lucy (Daphne Ruben-Vega).

"I think when we did the run of the show, even though it got a great reception, I was a bit lost," admits Hoffman candidly. "There were questions I just couldn't answer sufficiently for myself. The big one was: why does he [Jack] let Clyde do what he does? In the film, I think I buy it. I made changes in there to see how Jack would fall away from his focus. In the play it was quite abrupt, and Clyde was quite aggressive about sabotaging the evening. So the whole last half of the play was always a bit out of my grasp.

"It is the tricky part: why does he do all those things? And I kept having to talk to him [Ortiz]. It was like, don't think too much about what your character does in that evening. Think about what your character wants. What do they desperately, desperately want to ease the anxiety and pain in their gut? All of them are carrying this ball of something and they want someone to take it away. And so they act accordingly. In life, when that pain is that intense, we do dumb sh*t."

The lesson, Hoffman says, is that falling in love means the possibility of getting hurt, but we still do it anyway. "It's not a movie about two people getting together and falling in love," he elaborates. "It's a movie about, 'If I'm going to have a relationship - whether it's platonic or not - I am ultimately saying I am willing to be hurt. Because I'm willing to give you that power.'

"Ultimately, this film, if it's successful, is a statement on life, not on relationships. What you're left with in that final image of Clyde is a man who now does not know where he's going. He's almost Jack at the beginning of the movie. Or Jack ten years ago. He's a man now lost in the middle of his life. That's really what the film's getting at. So the tone had to be quite delicate, that you would just get the information when you got it. It's kind of a story that has an ending at the beginning."

The rather serious and intense if refreshingly frank Hoffman has now mercifully lost Jack's little mini-dreadlocks. He's also decided that directing a movie in which he stars is not for him, either. "Film director is a great job. But directing myself is not something that I liked. I've been an actor for a long time, and I like someone else out there telling me that I'm not good and challenging me and putting a good strong firm hand out there for me to take. Not doing well on any given day and knowing that I was the only one to turn to was…uncomfortable. So I had to get over that. I had to trust the writer who was there almost every day and my DP and my script supervisor. I just looked to them, and when they were like 'I don't know', I had to just go away. Sometimes I just had to walk off, go in a room and do my acting work. Then come back and be the actor. That really took a shift of concentration, of focus, that's kind of immense. As a director, it's a whole different thing. It ultimately worked out but, yeah, I remember those moments. I won't do it again in that capacity."

Back in 2005, he won the Best Actor Oscar for his brilliant performance in 'Capote', but Hoffman argues that whatever clout this has provided is virtually negligible given the subsequent career choices he's made. "I have celebrity, but I don't have the celebrity that some people have," he says dismissively. "This is a small movie. We were able to keep the cast, pretty much. I think the clout of the theatre company helped too. They knew that we all knew each other and that we'd work hard together and do the best we could. But I'm sure it [the Oscar] helped in some way in my life since then. Your cachet goes up because of that, but I don't really see a vast difference in my life before and after. I think I was given more than most before I won and I still am. I consider myself incredibly lucky. I mean that. Out of all the actors I know, what I've been given is an abundance of riches. I have been able to support myself as an actor since my late 20s. And trust me, most don't have that…"

'Jack Goes Boating' was released on July 8. See review.

Copyright Robin Askew 2011